Sweden has the world's fastest 4G LTE speeds, US ranks 8th overall

Despite having the most developed LTE infrastructure in the world, the speedy 4G network in the US isn’t actually all that fast compared to implementations in other countries. According to a new report from UK network testing firm OpenSignal, seven...

I think the spectrum plays an important part but also consider that the countries that rank higher than the US have a combined population that is less than it. Therefore there are not that many demands made by its citizens on their respective networks as it is in our country on an even lower spectrum.

While it is not as good as Sweden's, 9Mbps is not that bad for the US. I haven't benchmarked my usage and I haven't been on the 4G network for months now but 9Mbps is 3Mbps less than what I get on my landline DSL.

The US is just about perfectly setup to perform poorly in an average speed test like this. The US has many large population areas that would make it very expensive to outfit with fast 4G. I don't know about 4G configs etc, but I've seen plenty of reviews of smart phones that show US cities getting 25Mbps over 4G. I think the average is low because there are just too many people to cover in too much space. the only large countries in that list (Canada and Australia) also could have a high average because they have so few 4G areas.

In the effort to not make their results bogus though, I'd hope they accounted for population and done this test by taking the fastest 10 markets in each country and averaging them. Obviously they didn't since I doubt some of those countries even have 10 4G markets, but that would help the credibility. In the same manner that an MLB hitter isn't considered for batting average titles unless he has enough at-bats. Going to bat once and hitting 1.000 isn't really a good measure, right Hong Kong?

I got at least 20Mbps in San Antonio, TX on AT&T's 4G LTE. Sadly I live out in the boonies where the only "4G" service is HSPA+, which I get about 5Mbps with, which is about as good as the DSL connection I have to live with here as well.

Its very disappointing. I remember 2 years ago reading about how 4G will change everything with 1000+ Meg download speeds

yet highest you see is 30~

tests in London, UK got 100, but that was in closed testing with only a few people using it. I doubt that the case today. Well it might be with only 1 4G carrier, EE who have insane usage caps and ridiculously overpriced 4G. You can have 4G but don't you dare try and use it.

In South Africa we write messages on the cured skins of indigenous beasts and parcel them on carts drawn by oxen. Sometimes, if the roads are not slick from the winter rains, we can get parcels and missives to neighbouring villages in less than a week! We also have a mobile data telecoms infrastructure but nobody uses that because it’s simply so slow.

I think the spectrum plays an important part but also consider that the countries that rank higher than the US have a combined population that is less than it. Therefore there are not that many demands made by its citizens on their respective networks as it is in our country on an even lower spectrum.

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So is Hong Kong a small place that would not have any demands on its network??

Its very disappointing. I remember 2 years ago reading about how 4G will change everything with 1000+ Meg download speeds
yet highest you see is 30~

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Unfortunately journalists (and marketing guys sometimes as well) does not distinguish between peak technology performance and real user experience. LTE is capable of 100+ speeds and LTE-A can even reach 1Gbps BUT it is a radio technology and resources are SHARED between users. So 10 users connected to one sector in base station and downloading at the same time means that their average experience will be 10 Mbits/s. That spectrum bit is nonsense. Current devices cannot work with more than 20MHz. Reason for poorer performance in US are:
- much higher penetration and usage of LTE devices
- generally higher population density thus lower average performance
- wast covered areas means that many base stations are not connected with fibre, but with some 100+ Mbps wireless technology instead, so even that each sector on base station can perform over 100 Mbits, base station performance is limited with backhaul speed /will be case in many parts of Europe as well.

The United States continues to fall behind on most of the Internet/TV/Mobile/4G, you name it. In Canada the speeds for a 4G Hot Spot are blazing fast. I have a T-Mobile hotspot that claims 4G, but the page loads slower than dialup. In Canada on the Rogers Network pages load in milliseconds.

I have also had the opportunity to use 4G in Papua New Guinea, where their network is just rolling out, but the speeds on their network are way faster than in the United States.